Moulding compounds, commercially available

Currently, one of the most important commercially available materials today are the urea-formaldehyde (U-F) resins. Their applications include coatings, adhesives, castings, moulding compounds and textiles. Maciel et al. have produced a series of extensive papers in this area concentrating on both and CP/MAS [13-16]. 

Reinforced plastics first became commercially available in the 1940s. Unsaturated polyester reinforced with fibrous glass is the most widely used reinforced plastic today. Chopped glass mats are used for sheet moulding compounds (SMC), bulk moulding compounds (BMC) and hand lay-up composites. 

There is thus an optimum filler loading at which minimum internal stress performance is achieved and by utilising this fact it is possible to significantly improve the stress performance of epoxide moulding compounds. The properties of two commercially available low stress epoxide moulding compounds are compared to a standard material in Table 10.1. 

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